Kodak Hill Big Hall By Jens Andersson

Kodak Hill Office By Jens Andersson

Kodak Hill

By Jens Andersson

In the 1960s the American global camera and film company Kodak (1892) began to build a laboratory for film development in an industrial area situated on a hill in Järfälla, Sweden. In this enormous industrial complex, clad in rust red corrugated steel, hundreds of people worked for nearly three decades, developing a majority of all photographic film in Scandinavia. Kodak was once the largest camera and photographic film manufacturer in the world but when the digital camera was introduced in the late 1990s, the company failed to convert its analog camera modells and chemical developing process of film in time. So in 2001 “Kodak Hill” in Järfälla had to shut down and move out from its premises. But it was not until 2010 that the building itself was demolished which meant that it stood vacant for nearly a decade. At least this is what everybody thought. In these vast and empty halls where most families in Sweden had their memories from vacation trips developed, new colourful images started to emerge. Graffiti artists looking for spaces to work on their art undisturbed, found a way in. And although a well kept secret, the rumour of Kodak Hill slowly started to spread and eventually also became a destination for the homeless as well as one or two gangsters. Free from any political city planning or institutional art curation, one of Sweden’s largest and most secret art halls was able to organically take shape and flourish here. In 2007 photographer Jens Andersson was one of the lucky few who got to hear of Kodak Hill and began to document its interiors. On one of Andersson’s excursions he found a pile of the buildings original blueprints in a vacant office and decided to print his photos on them. Andersson’s Kodak Hill project was first exhibited at Nacka Konsthall in 2008 and is a unique documentation of what happens when the architecture of a building is repurposed through free creative will.

Photographer Jens Andersson (Swedish b 1974) has since 1991 captured urban life and environments in the corners of the city that rarely are light-up. Being a part of the early skate scene in Sweden, Andersson managed to cover this emerging culture in a raw, unedited way, resulting in the unique documentary book Sheraton Years (2008). Since opening his own studio in 1999 Andersson has like few others given the streets a human face to the public, tirelessly documenting its currents in fashion, art and the many homeless. Andersson has worked closely with the publication Situation Sthlm as well as on global campaigns for international brands such as Adidas, WeSC and Kangol.